Transfer switch

[cwlutterloh]

Does this look right? What needs to go in the home inverter spot?

(sorry for all the edits)

 

[rs50pilot]

I must have missed the part where you don't have your system yet.
Yes traditionally micros or a dc system will not work when the grid is down.

You will need another inverter. Now enphase has the brown out feature and since you are buying new, you could go with that, but they are going to recommend their battery.

Now you could buy a sol ark 12 or 15k and you would be set. 15k requires no transfer switch and will ac couple. It's pretty impressive, but I haven't used one.

As stated, there is no cheap solution. And having panels on your roof doing nothing when the grid is down is the norm for 1000s of people.

If you want to save some big money, install it yourself. Half of the system cost is labor.

Again cheap is relative, what's your idea of cheap? What is hers'?

Demanding power with the grid down is gonna cost, plain and simple.


I think you need to come up with a solid number as too how much energy you use, and how much back up you will need.

1000w 12v inverter not gonna get you very far.

 

[rs50pilot]

You only need one combiner.

 

[cwlutterloh]

Unfortunately, I have no idea what it costs. Ask your installer to quote it and let us know if you don't mind. I'd sure be curious.

From my installer...

The Sunlight Only option is $3,900 and it would provide you up to 1,560 Watts of backup power during the day, to 2-3 circuits (fridge,freezer, internet).

The 3.0 battery would be $9,100. The 10.0 is $12,900.

 

[GregTR]

Using an inverter without a battery is not reasonable in my opinion. If you have absolutely no chance of shading a panel then ok, it will work, but you need the battery to take care of starting loads. Even if it's a single 48v 50ah battery. Just something to take the inrush off of the system.

The problem is you can't control clouds so there is zero percent chance that one can guarantee no shading on the panels.

As for the OP, if you don't have the system yet, I'd advise you to think long and hard as to what you want to accomplish, what your needs/wants are and what are you planning for.

Most importantly, what kind of net metering is available to you? If you get kW for kW no matter when you put it into the grid and when you take it out, consider yourself lucky. If your situation is different from this, I highly recommend batteries, otherwise you'll be losing out on some quality PV energy value proposition.

If you want a battery backup in addition to PV, Enphase is probably not the most cost effective solution, their batteries are stupid expensive, you can do much better with something else.

I personally have a Sol-Ark 15K and I could not be happier. You can get a full 30 kWh UL listed battery rack for $12k if you go with Sol-Ark as Sol-Ark is battery agnostic and the market is way more competitive than trying to stay in the Enphase ecosystem. And if anyone starts telling you that string inverters are inefficient, just remember the 15K has 3 MPPTs and you can throw a couple of Tigo optimizers at your problem panels for $45 a piece if you genuinely worry about shading on some panels.

 

[rs50pilot]

The problem is you can't control clouds so there is zero percent chance that one can guarantee no shading on the panels.

As for the OP, if you don't have the system yet, I'd advise you to think long and hard as to what you want to accomplish, what your needs/wants are and what are you planning for.

Most importantly, what kind of net metering is available to you? If you get kW for kW no matter when you put it into the grid and when you take it out, consider yourself lucky. If your situation is different from this, I highly recommend batteries, otherwise you'll be losing out on some quality PV energy value proposition.

If you want a battery backup in addition to PV, Enphase is probably not the most cost effective solution, their batteries are stupid expensive, you can do much better with something else.

I personally have a Sol-Ark 15K and I could not be happier. You can get a full 30 kWh UL listed battery rack for $12k if you go with Sol-Ark as Sol-Ark is battery agnostic and the market is way more competitive than trying to stay in the Enphase ecosystem. And if anyone starts telling you that string inverters are inefficient, just remember the 15K has 3 MPPTs and you can throw a couple of Tigo optimizers at your problem panels for $45 a piece if you genuinely worry about shading on some panels.

I agree, I went enphase as I figured it was the easiest install, and very little wiring. 20 panels and I have 4 12ga wires running off of the roof.

I am using 3 sok batteries and one home built.

 

[OzSolar]

From my installer...

The Sunlight Only option is $3,900 and it would provide you up to 1,560 Watts of backup power during the day, to 2-3 circuits (fridge,freezer, internet).

The 3.0 battery would be $9,100. The 10.0 is $12,900.

Are those battery prices on top of the $3,900? That's an oddly specific wattage number for backup power potential. Maybe only 4 solar panels are feeding the back up power circuits?? Thanks for sharing. I know a bit more about the Enphase System than I did before.

 

[OzSolar]

Most importantly, what kind of net metering is available to you? If you get kW for kW no matter when you put it into the grid and when you take it out, consider yourself lucky. If your situation is different from this, I highly recommend batteries, otherwise you'll be losing out on some quality PV energy value proposition.

This is very valid point, and it needs to be talked about a more. I've been thinking about starting a new thread to poll people to get a feel for what most of us are seeing for net metering policies in their area and how they are working with them.

I have 1:1 until the end of the month. I'm taking it that you don't? Every utility around me that I am aware of around me also does 1:1 until the end of the month. The includes IOU's, REC's and Municipals. Surplus is carried forward at ~2.5 cents. You have 11 months to use that credit up then it goes away. That's been the norm in my region for at least 10 years. IMHO, batteries don't make any financial sense with my metering arrangement. I suspect that will change sooner than later. One utility is getting ready to roll out TOU but the details aren't clear yet.

You can get a full 30 kWh UL listed battery rack for $12k

Please share the details of this battery if you don't mind.

 

[Ampster]

You can get a full 30 kWh UL listed battery rack for $12k

That is $400 per kWh. I think I have seen UL listed batteries for less but I don't follow that market closely. DIY is still under $200 per kWh.

 

[rs50pilot]

That is $400 per kWh. I think I have seen UL listed batteries for less but I don't follow that market closely. DIY is still under $200 per kWh.

Eg4 and SOK are that price. EG4 UL listed and I'm pretty sure SOK cells are.

 

[Ampster]

Eg4 and SOK are that price. EG4 UL listed and I'm pretty sure SOK cells are.

Good to know. So I will make a note that the price point for UL listed batteries is $400 per kWh.

 

[Goboatingnow]

This is very valid point and it needs to be talked about a lot more. I've been thinking about starting a new thread to poll to get a feel for what most of use are seeing for net metering policies in their area and they are working with them.

I have 1:1 until the end of the month. I'm taking it you don't? Every utility around me that I am aware of around me also does 1:1 until the end of the month. The includes IOU's, REC's and Municipals. Any surplus carried forward at ~2.5 cents. You have 11 months to use that credit up then it goes away. That's been the norm in my region for at least 10 years. IMHO, batteries don't make any financial sense with my metering arrangement. I suspect that will change sooner than later. One utility is getting ready to roll out TOU but the details aren't clear yet.


Please share the details of this battery if you don't mind.

I have no
Ability to make my meter count backwards.

 

[GregTR]

This is very valid point, and it needs to be talked about a more. I've been thinking about starting a new thread to poll people to get a feel for what most of us are seeing for net metering policies in their area and how they are working with them.

I have 1:1 until the end of the month. I'm taking it that you don't? Every utility around me that I am aware of around me also does 1:1 until the end of the month. The includes IOU's, REC's and Municipals. Surplus is carried forward at ~2.5 cents. You have 11 months to use that credit up then it goes away. That's been the norm in my region for at least 10 years. IMHO, batteries don't make any financial sense with my metering arrangement. I suspect that will change sooner than later. One utility is getting ready to roll out TOU but the details aren't clear yet.


Please share the details of this battery if you don't mind.

I'm in Texas where we get absolutely no net metering of any sort. We do get our choice of electricity provider though which keeps pricing competitive unless you're in an area with a co-op where all bets are off as what you can and cannot have, it's a monopoly.

Our electricity has two components per kWh, one goes to your TDU (Transmission and Distribution Utilities) which is your local grid owner. This is a fixed charge per kWh that you have to pay for grid use essentially. The second part goes to your REP (Retail Electricity Provider) who charges you for the actual electricity you use and they put the amount of your usage into the grid.

Your TDU is fixed based on where you are in Texas but your REP you can choose freely on the open market. It's the REPs who you can negotiate with solar buyback agreements but best case scenario they might give you the REP charge of the electricity but they almost never give you the TDU charge on the power you load into the grid. Since TDU is around $0.04/kWh and the REP charge can range from $0.10 to $0.25/kWh you have to make a decision on who to go with; usually the cheaper the REP charge, the less likely they give you anything for solar grid upload. So depending on how much you're planning to upload you are more than likely better off with picking a REP that offers low prices and gives you nothing for solar production than finding a REP that gives you money for you upload but charges you more for every kWh you take from them.

Some REPs offer free night plans which look horrible for your everyday user because their daytime charge is high but their night time is free and in Texas with A/C running constantly, it's really hard to offset your use to the 9PM-7AM hours. But with solar and batteries the equation changes significantly. You can essentially cover all your 7am-9pm coverage and get free electricity at night. The REP I chose even pays for my TDU charge at night so it's legit completely free electricity. I charge up my battery at 9PM then use it to offset my morning until the sun comes up at which point I go 100% solar and top off the battery for the evening hours. This is the best deal for folks with solar/battery in town. And to top it off they pay you $0.03/kWh that you send to the grid up to your total bill cost, so you can essentially zero out your cloudy day usage with the sunny days should you need to occasionally pay $0.29/kWh (Including TDU) during the day.

The problem is when your door to door solar salesmen sell a grid tie system with 19 kW worth of panels and no batteries for $60K to your unsuspecting buyer and they end up with a monthly bill and a system that only saves them $100/month in electricity because it's way oversized for self consumption and we have no net metering.

For batteries you can get a EG4-LifePower4 UL listed 48V 100aH battery for $1,500. That's $300/kWh. I added in the price of the rack which is another $600 to hold 6 of these units. With sales tax and shipping you're probably still looking at less than $11k. Try that with Enphase....

 

[Goboatingnow]

I'm in Texas where we get absolutely no net metering of any sort. We do get our choice of electricity provider though which keeps pricing competitive unless you're in an area with a co-op where all bets are off as what you can and cannot have, it's a monopoly.

Our electricity has two components per kWh, one goes to your TDU (Transmission and Distribution Utilities) which is your local grid owner. This is a fixed charge per kWh that you have to pay for grid use essentially. The second part goes to your REP (Retail Electricity Provider) who charges you for the actual electricity you use and they put the amount of your usage into the grid.

Your TDU is fixed based on where you are in Texas but your REP you can choose freely on the open market. It's the REPs who you can negotiate with solar buyback agreements but best case scenario they might give you the REP charge of the electricity but they almost never give you the TDU charge on the power you load into the grid. Since TDU is around $0.04/kWh and the REP charge can range from $0.10 to $0.25/kWh you have to make a decision on who to go with; usually the cheaper the REP charge, the less likely they give you anything for solar grid upload. So depending on how much you're planning to upload you are more than likely better off with picking a REP that offers low prices and gives you nothing for solar production than finding a REP that gives you money for you upload but charges you more for every kWh you take from them.

Some REPs offer free night plans which look horrible for your everyday user because their daytime charge is high but their night time is free and in Texas with A/C running constantly, it's really hard to offset your use to the 9PM-7AM hours. But with solar and batteries the equation changes significantly. You can essentially cover all your 7am-9pm coverage and get free electricity at night. The REP I chose even pays for my TDU charge at night so it's legit completely free electricity. I charge up my battery at 9PM then use it to offset my morning until the sun comes up at which point I go 100% solar and top off the battery for the evening hours. This is the best deal for folks with solar/battery in town. And to top it off they pay you $0.03/kWh that you send to the grid up to your total bill cost, so you can essentially zero out your cloudy day usage with the sunny days should you need to occasionally pay $0.29/kWh (Including TDU) during the day.

The problem is when your door to door solar salesmen sell a grid tie system with 19 kW worth of panels and no batteries for $60K to your unsuspecting buyer and they end up with a monthly bill and a system that only saves them $100/month in electricity because it's way oversized for self consumption and we have no net metering.

For batteries you can get a EG4-LifePower4 UL listed 48V 100aH battery for $1,500. That's $300/kWh. I added in the price of the rack which is another $600 to hold 6 of these units. With sales tax and shipping you're probably still looking at less than $11k. Try that with Enphase....

Good post

 

[rs50pilot]

I'm in Texas where we get absolutely no net metering of any sort. We do get our choice of electricity provider though which keeps pricing competitive unless you're in an area with a co-op where all bets are off as what you can and cannot have, it's a monopoly.

Our electricity has two components per kWh, one goes to your TDU (Transmission and Distribution Utilities) which is your local grid owner. This is a fixed charge per kWh that you have to pay for grid use essentially. The second part goes to your REP (Retail Electricity Provider) who charges you for the actual electricity you use and they put the amount of your usage into the grid.

Your TDU is fixed based on where you are in Texas but your REP you can choose freely on the open market. It's the REPs who you can negotiate with solar buyback agreements but best case scenario they might give you the REP charge of the electricity but they almost never give you the TDU charge on the power you load into the grid. Since TDU is around $0.04/kWh and the REP charge can range from $0.10 to $0.25/kWh you have to make a decision on who to go with; usually the cheaper the REP charge, the less likely they give you anything for solar grid upload. So depending on how much you're planning to upload you are more than likely better off with picking a REP that offers low prices and gives you nothing for solar production than finding a REP that gives you money for you upload but charges you more for every kWh you take from them.

Some REPs offer free night plans which look horrible for your everyday user because their daytime charge is high but their night time is free and in Texas with A/C running constantly, it's really hard to offset your use to the 9PM-7AM hours. But with solar and batteries the equation changes significantly. You can essentially cover all your 7am-9pm coverage and get free electricity at night. The REP I chose even pays for my TDU charge at night so it's legit completely free electricity. I charge up my battery at 9PM then use it to offset my morning until the sun comes up at which point I go 100% solar and top off the battery for the evening hours. This is the best deal for folks with solar/battery in town. And to top it off they pay you $0.03/kWh that you send to the grid up to your total bill cost, so you can essentially zero out your cloudy day usage with the sunny days should you need to occasionally pay $0.29/kWh (Including TDU) during the day.

The problem is when your door to door solar salesmen sell a grid tie system with 19 kW worth of panels and no batteries for $60K to your unsuspecting buyer and they end up with a monthly bill and a system that only saves them $100/month in electricity because it's way oversized for self consumption and we have no net metering.

For batteries you can get a EG4-LifePower4 UL listed 48V 100aH battery for $1,500. That's $300/kWh. I added in the price of the rack which is another $600 to hold 6 of these units. With sales tax and shipping you're probably still looking at less than $11k. Try that with Enphase....

At least you have a choice for power. In CA... Well northern CA, PGE is it. In my area anyway. We don't have a choice.

The sob story about 60k solar... well, I would just say people are lazy and too trusting. I grew up with encyclopedias... You did your actual "research", you didn't read the first three reviews you could find like today. Then bitch about how you were lead down the wrong path.

Information is everything. Hell even if YouTube was your main source of solar information, you would know what to spend on a solar system.

I'm not picking on you Greg, just saying.

 

[OzSolar]

Thanks for the details. So, the instant you start sending kWh back to grid they are bought at 3 cents, right? That clears some things up about self-consumption modes on inverters that I've been wondering about. I've got a buddy in Texas who's had solar a few years and swears he gets a full 1:1 retail credit and even the excess monthly is carried fwd. at retail. It's been a year since we talked about his solar. Could he be grandfathered in or maybe on a CO-OP that is solar friendly?

For batteries you can get a EG4-LifePower4 UL listed 48V 100aH battery for $1,500. That's $300/kWh. I added in the price of the rack which is another $600 to hold 6 of these units. With sales tax and shipping you're probably still looking at less than $11k. Try that with Enphase....

I had seen they were using UL cells but now I see they have UL Listed Batteries. Thanks for getting me to look again. Are you letting them communicate with your Sol-Ark? That seems where things get iffy with the server rack batteries. Will has commented several times that he just leaves the comms disconnected and things work.

An no love for Enphase on my part. I was tasked with looking at a proposal that they said used "micro inverters with backup power" so I did some looking into Enphase before I visited the site. When I saw the actual proposal, it was for Solar-Edge. That was just one of many things I discovered that the time share salesperson turned solar salesperson screwed up.

 

[rs50pilot]

Thanks for the the details. So the instant you start sending kWh back to grid they are bought at 3 cents, right? That clears some things up about self consumption modes on inverters that I've been wondering about. I've got a buddy in Texas who's had solar a few years and swears he gets a full retail credit and even the excess monthly is carried fwd at retail. It's been a year since we talked about his solar. Could he be grandfathered in or maybe on a CO-OP that is solar friendly?


I'd had seen they had UL cells but now I see they have UL Listed Batteries. Thanks for getting me to look again. Are you letting them communicate with your Sol-Ark? That seems where things get iffy with the server rack batteries. Will has commented several times that he just leaves the comms disconnected and things work.

An no love for Enphase on my part. I was tasked with looking at a proposal that they said used "micro inverters with backup power" so I did some looking into Enphase before I visited the site. When I saw the actual proposal, it was for Solar-Edge. That was just one of many things I discovered that the time share sales person turned solar sales person screwed up.

Did you install your own solar? Just wondering why you don't like enphase.

 

[OzSolar]

Did you install your own solar? Just wondering why you don't like enphase.

I did.

I said I don't love them but that doesn't mean I don't like them. They appear to be a great product.

 

[cwlutterloh]

Most importantly, what kind of net metering is available to you? If you get kW for kW no matter when you put it into the grid and when you take it out, consider yourself lucky.

I am lucky as my netmetering is 1:1. (at least for now)

If you want a battery backup in addition to PV, Enphase is probably not the most cost effective solution, their batteries are stupid expensive, you can do much better with something else.

What other options are there for a microinverter install? Is this something I can install myself or does it need a licensed electrician?

Are those battery prices on top of the $3,900? That's an oddly specific wattage number for backup power potential. Maybe only 4 solar panels are feeding the back up power circuits?? Thanks for sharing. I know a bit more about the Enphase System than I did before.

The Sunlight only option doesn't require batteries. It was specific wattage to the number of panels in the quote. It's something like 33% of the system potential to allow for surge and shade.

 

[GregTR]

Thanks for the details. So, the instant you start sending kWh back to grid they are bought at 3 cents, right? That clears some things up about self-consumption modes on inverters that I've been wondering about. I've got a buddy in Texas who's had solar a few years and swears he gets a full 1:1 retail credit and even the excess monthly is carried fwd. at retail. It's been a year since we talked about his solar. Could he be grandfathered in or maybe on a CO-OP that is solar friendly?

Correct. If I put solar on the grid, I get $0.03/kWh. If I use energy from the grid between 7am and 9pm I pay $0.29/kWh. If I draw from the grid between 9pm and 7am it's completely free. I have a $4.95 monthly base charge. Excess solar credits don't roll over between months. And I have this contract locked in for 2 years. Until then my system will be more than enough and offset any and all electricity usage that I would otherwise have to pay for. We'll see what kind of plan they will be offering in two years and I will either grow my system, change to a different charging strategy or find the cheapest electricity provider.

The only 1:1 net metering agreement that I am aware of in Texas is through Green Mountain Energy and you had to have the system installed by them. Their electricity prices are not the cheapest either, see my previous comment about choosing your REP based on cost of power vs. benefit of buyback. Co-Ops generally are not solar friendly.

I had seen they were using UL cells but now I see they have UL Listed Batteries. Thanks for getting me to look again. Are you letting them communicate with your Sol-Ark? That seems where things get iffy with the server rack batteries. Will has commented several times that he just leaves the comms disconnected and things work.

When I started my research and looking, just like you said, they did not have UL Listed rackmount batteries so I went with Homegrid Stack'D. It was a good bit more expensive, about $600/kWh. The newest Lifepower batteries do talk Sol-Ark or allegedly will with a firmware upgrade. Given that Sol-Ark and Signature Solar are both in Texas and mere hours away from each other it would make perfect sense to collaborate for a cost effective solution. There is literally nothing on the market that can touch the value proposition a Sol-Ark 15K with 30kWh Lifepower4 rack. If this setup passes city inspections it will be a force to be reckoned with. Sol-Ark just signed another assurance partnership with Tigo for optimizers at the beginning of the month.

Batteries at $300/kWh storage actually make financial sense. If you estimate 6,000 cycles at 80% efficiency that would mean you will get about $0.06/kWh of cost during the lifetime of the battery. You'd be hard pressed to find electricity that cheap. At my cost of $600/kWh it still makes sense as they cost about $0.12/kWh which is still cheaper than retail electricity price. We're at a point where home generation and storage both make financial sense even in Texas where electricity is cheap which is a glorious time to be living at!

An no love for Enphase on my part. I was tasked with looking at a proposal that they said used "micro inverters with backup power" so I did some looking into Enphase before I visited the site. When I saw the actual proposal, it was for Solar-Edge. That was just one of many things I discovered that the time share salesperson turned solar salesperson screwed up.

Solar Edge was another setup I considered for myself but again, the cost was just too much, those high voltage batteries, no matter the source, are expensive.